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Could What the Democrats Did for Ill Benefit McHenry County Disproportionately? Or, Why I Think Donna Kurtz Will Win the Primary

I’ve written previously that McHenry County will gain congressional clout because those of us who live in Algonquin Township will be represented by U.S. Representative Peter Roskam, assuming no court challenge is successful.

Recently I’ve been thinking how McHenry County has four state representative districts, one in whole and three in parts.

What Mike Madigan’s staff would probably consider the power center for the Republican Party in McHenry County, Crystal Lake, was split four ways. Jack Franks’ continues to have a small portion of northwestern Crystal Lake. The other three districts meet in the middle of Crystal Lake.

McHenry County Board member Donna Kurtz lives one block west of the north-south street at the northwestern edge of the new 52nd State Rep. district. The cut line has been corrected because of the sharp eyes of a reader-editor. Kurtz, then does not live in Beaubien's 52nd District, but such residence is not a requirement for candidacy in reapportionment years.

With 308,760 people counted by U.S. Census takers, McHenry County deserves almost three full state rep. districts.

Mike Madigan gave Jack Franks one of them.

A vacant district running north from the Crystal Lake Country Club to Antioch is clearly dominated by McHenry County voters.

Mike Tryon got 67% (percentage of GOP primary votes in McHenry County) of one that goes deeply into Kane County.

And Mark Beaubien’s 52nd district contains a chunk of Crystal Lake, Algonquin, Cary and Fox River Grove.

Obviously Beaubien did not live in McHenry County. His home was in southwestern Lake County. No one doubted that he win re-election.

But now his seat is unoccupied.

I think it is likely that McHenry County will end up with four resident state representatives.

Madigan could have arranged for us to have three, but his map has set the stage for us to get four.

A map of the new 52nd State Representative District.

Names are surfacing for the 52nd District.

While I have heard several from McHenry County, it is my opinion that McHenry County Board member Donna Kurtz is most likely to be able to win the primary election.

From personal experience, I know how effective Personal PAC can be. It took the pro-abortion group three elections to defeat me, but defeat me they did. With Rosemary Kurtz.

If Donna Kurtz runs and she is the only pro-choice candidate, I would be willing to give odds that she would beat a multi-candidate group of conservative, pro-life candidates.

And, that’s what I think will happen.

People who want to be candidates are not shrinking violets.

They think they can win, regardless of what dispassionate outsiders might discern. And candidates from the Barrington area will be able to raise sufficient money to hire campaign consultants who, wanting a pay check, will convince them they can win.

There was only one pro-choice candidate in that race, however. He was not well-financed.

The difference is that Personal PAC already had a candidate for Congress in the 8th District.

Melissa Bean.

So, the political action committee did not get involved in the GOP primary election in the 8th congressional district.

This is two-thirds of the inside of a pamphlet attacking Dan Duffy. Along the bottom is the admonition to "VOTE NO ON DAN DUFFY."

From the above mailing against State Senator Dan Duffy, you can see that Personal PAC has no compunction about lying. The favored candidate’s finger prints won’t be on such pieces.

Independent expenditures, don’t you know.

Mailers like this come at the last minute, of course.

Personal PAC will also pay a calling center to identify early on every woman who is willing to say she is “pro-choice” and use that data base to drive those voters to the polls, using the kind of vicious campaign that Duffy saw two years ago. (Duffy won, but it was a one-on-one race, not a one-on-five race.)

Pro-lifers have not been able to marshal the money for a similar voter identification effort for even one state rep. district in Illinois.

Tom Morrison

There is no pro-life counterbalance to Personal PAC.

It’s not that Personal PAC cannot be beaten.

Tom Morrison beat one of their favorites–Suzi Bassi–in the Palatine are last spring. As an incumbent, she didn’t have the advantage of having more than conservative opponent to split the vote.

Kurtz will.

No one can convince me that the 52rd district is not at least 25%, maybe 30%, pro-choice. Maybe more.

Divide 100% by 6 candidates and you tell me what percentage is required to win.